He had been warned by their GP, a personal friend of the family, to cut back on the amount of alcohol he consumed. He’d been told to watch his diet too. But he was old-school and refused to moderate what he ate, no matter how much Naomi nagged him. He was the kind of man who believed the usual rules didn’t apply to him; he was untouchable.

‘I’m going to die of something,’ he would say when she tried to make him see sense, ‘and I hope to God it happens before I go gaga!’

The perfect end for him would have been falling asleep in the conservatory after a day of sailing in his beloved boat, the Marlow. The name, at Naomi’s suggestion, had been a combination of Martha and Willow’s names.

The absence of his larger than life presence had taken some getting used to when he’d died, but she had not been what you would call heartbroken. Her life had not ground to a halt as people might have believed it would when they were paying their respects at the funeral. The way they’d offered their sympathy it was as if they thought she couldn’t exist without Colin, that he had been everything for her.

The truth was, once the funeral was behind her, she had felt a gradual transformation of her old self into a new and stronger self. Her genuine self, she liked to think.

While it was true Colin had been the one to make all the financial decisions, which was his area of expertise after all, him being an associate director of an international investment company, she was the one who ran the show behind the scenes at home.

Yes, he was the star performer on stage, the one who held court and entertained their friends and his numerous work colleagues and clients, but she was the one backstage directing, producing and changing the scenery. She had accepted a very long time ago that there could only be one star performer in their marriage, and that was Colin. That was how some partnerships had to be.

She had been widowed for just over two years now and there wasn’t a day when she wasn’t reminded of Colin, but she refused to live in the past. Life changes and acceptance of that fact enabled a person to adapt and change as well. Maybe even for the better.

Her coffee finished, she saw that the curlews in the mudflats had now been joined by a couple of industrious redshanks. Dig, dig, dig, went their beaks.

Redshanks always reminded Naomi of her eldest daughter, Martha. It was the purposefulness of the bird that did it, the way it went about its business with such conviction. That was Martha all over – determined and focused. She set herself a goal and applied herself to it with unwavering intent. She was a doer, just like her father had been. In contrast, Willow was more like a wren – dainty and hopping around without any real direction.